Larry D. Lauer

Events this week caused me to reflect on the many crises I have been involved with handling over the years. I was amused to remember how some close colleagues would observe how “cool” I remained under fire!

The fact is, I was always terrified!

But it was pure fear that caused me to study crisis communication and management when there was no crisis. I decided to write about it, and to work it into my teaching as a way of making sure I learned the material. This allowed me to develop a step-by-step guide for handling whatever might come my way. True, each crisis is unique. But it is also true that the steps for handling them will remain very much the same.

This lesson also holds true for most other aspects of our work… including developing brand clarity, writing important proposals, giving major presentations, and even designing group process for integrated planning.

Bottom line: Always do your homework.  Your never can over-prepare. Then when the drama begins, you just follow your step-by-step plan. Magically, you will look like you know what you’re doing, and that will make you effective even when deep inside you are terrified!

This week, I happend to see the wonderful PBS three-part documentary about the career of Secretary of State, George Schultz. Besides serving as a professor at MIT, dean of the University of Chicago Business School, and Secretary of Labor, Treasury and State, historians are likely to report that Mr. Schultz was the most effective statesman of our time.

When asked about lessons learned, George Schultz flatly stated: “It all begins with ideas. Without them you get lost.”

True, he was a Republican because he believed in limited government and free markets. But he also believed that once in government the aim is not partisian success, but rather to simply find the best ideas that will help solve complicated problems. 

As I struggled to understand how to transform institutions, I found myself pleading with my colleagues to back away from immediately jumping into tactics and try to see what we do first as “a way of thinking.”  Over time I came to see my work as an “adventure in ideas,” and a personal search for the best ones.  

It’s the best ideas that shape the big picture and inform the selection of  the most effective tactics.  In fact, for me that is what justifies the description “professional.” 

It’s not difficult to think up new “stuff” to do. Anyone can do that. How many times has someone come to you with a tactic they want you to implement, but that you know will just not work?  What makes us professionals is the experience and analytical tools that we bring to the selection of the best set of tactics for each situation and market segment.

Indeed, it all begins with ideas.  Without them, you get lost!

Every week someone asks me why the Schieffer School of Journalism changed the name of  its’ program in advertising and public relations to strategic communication.  If you put this question to my academic colleagues you no doubt will get different answers.

But I always have been amazed at how we continually fail to convince the public to see our profession as we do.  This is especially true when we use the term “PR,” or so I think.  I have found that people inevitably want to see PR practitioners as the servants who will send out your press release, print your brochure, plan your party, and “spin” positive stories. 

And even though we are the very professionals that claim to be able to define and communicate institutional brand identites, we have been a total failure at successfully branding our own profession. 

As a consequence, I quickly found early in my career that when I used PR in my title most CEO’s would see me as they defined the term, not as Idid. I wanted to be seen as the professional communicator who understood all the tools in the communication tool box. My role was to view the world as a collection of market or audience segments, and to know the right combination of tools for each segment, and for each situation.

So when my colleagues would get into arguments about what was more powerful, advertising or public relations, and would even treat them as separate disciplines, I was certain we were again shooting ourselves in the foot!

But I learned through trial and error that when I stopped using PR and used the term strategic communication to describe my profession, things changed. Senior managers could accept me as the one professional on the team who could help them plan comprehensive communication programs, solve real problems, deal effectively with issues, and handle crises.

Later in my career I would also find that using both strategic communication and “marketing” to describe what what I do would work even better. 

True, using the word “marketing”  is also problematic at first. But unlike my experience with PR, in today’s highly competitive world,  executives are eventually able to see that both strategic communication and marketing are sophisticated, comprehensive, executive-level functions.